


Mercy

by Kyni, OrphielBurrito



Series: Of time and universes [6]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-20
Updated: 2017-08-20
Packaged: 2018-12-17 20:36:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11859201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kyni/pseuds/Kyni, https://archiveofourown.org/users/OrphielBurrito/pseuds/OrphielBurrito
Summary: The Valeyard is defeated and time has been rewritten again, but how can the Doctor deal with their own darkness?





	Mercy

Time seemed to stop for an eternity or two.

In another timeline that never happened, the Master had been abducted by Cybermen ruled by the Valeyard and converted. His vortex manipulator had exploded on his arm, forcing him to regenerate and making him lose all emotions. But none of this had happened, not anymore, for time had been rewritten one last time. The face that the Master saw in the mirror belonged to an ex-Prime Minister, a master of disguise stuck wearing the features of a man that everybody knew. Of a man who was dying.

The Doctor sat in their ship, arms wrapped around their legs, slowly rocking back and forth with their eyes fixed on the void. The Master could rewrite time but he couldn't rewrite their memories and make them forget what it felt like, make them forget the taste of blood under their tongue. People had died under their hand, they had screamed and begged and implored and in their immense magnanimity, the Time Lord had consented to let them go. To let them die.

They had always known that the other was somewhere in their mind, waiting for it to break. They had felt the darkness and the power that awaited and the exhilarating freedom to throw all of their principles away, to finally admit the truth of who they were. A monster. _The one who made people better,_ the one who shaped people and put them in danger and made them sacrifice their life for them. The details... the details were blurry. But the Doctor knew one thing: they and the Valeyard were not different beings in the end.

There was no explanation as to how the Master had found them, none that came to mind immediately; nor was there any for his softness. The way he caressed their cheek and called their name. It wasn't their name. It couldn't be anymore. What had Martha said, a long time ago? The title of Doctor ought to be earned. She had deserved hers when she had saved the world and walked the Earth for an entire year, when she had consented to be their maid when they were escaping the Family of Blood despite everything that it entailed and the racial context that they'd been so oblivious to, when she had faced Lazarus, when she had used her last breath to save them on the Moon. Martha was everything they had wished to be. She was brave and kind and compassionate and full of light.

They were nothing.

They were the Valeyard and the Valeyard was them. That they couldn't remember the details and were crying over what they had done didn't change anything. Flashes appeared before their eyes of scenes that had never happened and yet marked their hearts with a burning iron, flashes of tears and families forced to watch everyone they loved disappear. Flashes of rotting flesh and people falling on their knees to beg for their mercy, a mercy that they would generously grant on their own terms, a mercy that was worse than any ruthlessness they could have shown.  _Mercy._ Had it always been like this? Had they always confused horror for kindness?

That was the reason why they should never have been alone in the first place. Left to their own device, the Doctor was nothing more than a creature of blood and domination, filled to the brim with ideals that everybody else saw as the masquerade they were. Perhaps that was the reason why they had had such a hard time accepting loneliness at first, perhaps part of them had known what was coming. Clara had been wise to get away when she still could.

“I don't know what to do,” they murmured, their eyes still wide open in terror and glaring at the wall in front of them. “I don't know what to do.”

The Master lifted their chin and made them look at him. His face... his face wasn't quite right. He was back. He was back? Yes, he had changed, regenerated in that time that never happened. But he was back. Their Master was back. The one they had abandoned on Gallifrey and left to die after he saved them and the entire universe. The one they had tried to killed. The one who should have despised and hated them.

“Be the Doctor again,” he whispered before kissing their forehead.

  
  


  
  


 


End file.
